Books: The Brothers Medvedev

A QUESTION OF MADNESS by Zhores and Roy Medvedev. 223 pages. Knopf.
$5.95.

The Medvedev twins have punched some embarrassing small holes in their
country's bureaucracy. Zhores, a biochemist and sociologist of science,
made influential enemies with his book The Rise and Fall of T.D.
Lysenko (Columbia University Press, 1969). Drawing upon his personal
experience as a devoted Marxist working within the Soviet scientific
establishment, he fashioned a dispassionate piece of scholarship about
Stalin's quack biologist and agronomist, whose theories hobbled
Russia's economy for more than a generation.